Publications
3. "Hypertension effects of the COVID-19 lockdowns: Evidence from a repeated cross-sectional survey in Peru" (with Vlad Radoias and Younoh Kim) at Economics and Human Biology, 2024 [LINK]
2. "Long-term Effects of an Education Stipend Program on Domestic Violence: Evidence from Bangladesh" (with Sadia Priyanka) at The World Bank Economic Review, 2023 [LINK] [SSRN LINK]
1. "The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Alcohol and Tobacco Consumption: Evidence from Peru" at Social Science and Medicine, 2023 [LINK]
Working Papers
"Intergenerational Effect of an Education Stipend Program on Early Childhood Development: Evidence from Bangladesh" (with Sadia Priyanka)
Abstract: Human capital accumulation in early childhood is a critical stage in the life cycle for forming skills that have long-lasting economic consequences. This paper studies whether an education stipend program targeted at girls’ secondary schooling had an intergenerational impact on their children’s skills development. Exploiting two sources of variation in the intensity of program exposure and geographic eligibility, we find significant intergenerational gains in children’s cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Evaluating mechanisms, we find improvement in women’s empowerment along multiple dimensions. We further detect changes in parental investments and parenting behavior regarding child engagement and disciplinary measures to address behavioral problems.
"COVID-19 and Early Childhood Development: The Curious Case of Peru" (with Marco Castillo)
Abstract: Peru experienced one of the largest mortality rates due to COVID and imposed one of the strictest curfews in 2020 to combat it. We leverage the timing of these curfews and the timing of data collection of health surveys to measure the impact of the pandemic on physical and cognitive development of children under 5 years of age. We find increments in height (0.17SD), weight (0.17SD), BMI (0.10SD), and symbolic function (0.10SD). While the demand of health services significantly decreased during this period, parental involvement and household environment indicators improved. These changes explain 20% of the improvement in symbolic function, and 10% of the improvement in physical development. Our study is consistent with a reallocation of resources towards child investments in response to an increase in the relative cost of adult goods, but is also consistent with learning. It stresses the complexity of the production of skills at early ages and the importance of accounting for the relevant actors in this process.
"Civil Conflict and Later Life Crime"
Abstract: In the 1980s, Peru was marred by a gruesome civil conflict that persisted for over a decade. This paper looks at the impact of exposure to conflict at different stages of childhood on criminal activity later in life. To identify effects, I exploit the temporal and geographic variation in the spread of the war across Peru. Using the birth year and birth location information from the 2016 national penitentiary population census and the 2015-2017 national household survey data, I estimate how exposure to war during different ages affects long-term criminal behavior. I find evidence that exposure to conflict during primary school going ages for men increases their probability of incarceration in adulthood. Unlike other evidences on the long-term impacts of war, exposure during early childhood does not seem to explain criminal behavior in later life in this context.
"Maternal Conditions and Child Well-Being" (with Marco Castillo)
Abstract: Maternal contribution in the nurture and growth of their children is indispensable. However, they may be faced with unfavorable situations that can adversely affect the children. One such common and pervasive problem is domestic violence. Peru, as a country with one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the world, introduced Women's Emergency Centers (WEC) that were found to be effective in reducing domestic violence towards women. In this paper, we examine whether a program targeted towards the victims of domestic violence can impact the cognitive and health outcome of children. We find evidence that exposure to the WEC within 2 km of the household improves the health outcomes of children under the age of five in terms of their weight-for-age z-scores, wasting and underweight. We also find some evidence that access to these centers improve the cognitive development of children in terms of their symbolic function. The improvement in the health outcomes is posited to be driven by reduction in the probability of experiencing domestic violence of the mothers with closer proximity to the Women's Emergency Centers. We also find evidence that maternal-child attachment improves with exposure to these centers. This is consistent with maternal involvement being impaired by domestic violence.
"The Many Faces of Abuse: Labor Market Opportunities and Domestic Violence" (with Marco Castillo and Ragan Petrie)
Abstract: Despite the substantial implications of increased female labor market opportunities for women, relatively less is known about the impact of improved outside option for women on domestic violence, especially in the context of developing countries. Economic theory on household bargaining model predicts that better outside option for women should reduce the level of domestic abuse through greater bargaining power. We exploit the exogenous variation in labor demand induced by differing gender composition across industries to show the impact of changes in the relative labor market condition for women on various forms of abuse. Using nine waves of Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) from Peru, we find evidence of lower likelihood of intimate partner violence with improvement in the labor market opportunities for women.
"Fairness Preferences Revisited" (with Yinjunjie Zhang, Manuel Hoffmann and Catherine Eckel) revise and resubmit at The Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization [SSRN LINK]
Abstract: This study revisits Engelmann and Strobel (2004), that tests theoretical models of fairness preferences with simple distribution games in a classroom environment with German students. We attempt to generalize the findings from ES (2004) to a digital context with US subjects by executing three experimental waves on Amazon Mechanical Turk. As in the original study, we find similar results for efficiency concerns and ERC. However, we find that selfishness motives have larger power for rationalizing allocation decisions while maximin preferences do not explain choices in our context. We draw on a plethora of replication criteria that lead up to 80% replication success with a large variation across criteria. We do not find meaningful preference changes during the pandemic using panel data from the first to the second wave. By leveraging a third wave, we show that lower maximin motives may be attributable to cultural differences in fairness considerations while larger selfishness preferences may be driven by the high anonymity in an online relative to a classroom environment.